Further Reading

A login-managing USB key won awards, was covered everywhere, never materialized.

A fact check on a PC workstation concept from Hack A Day suggests that consumers might want to be wary about investing in the concept device. Silent Power's pitch is for a compact tower that, among other unusual features, stays cool through the use of "copper foam," which Hack A Day calls "quite literally, one of the worst possible heat sinks imaginable."

Silent Power first surfaced as a crowdfunded project on IndieGogo, seeking money to produce the PC. The project was taken down "without warning," according to the team, but the company is now looking for funding via PayPal. If they can crack 45,000 ($60,424), they will start making the product.

Unfortunately, Hack A Day warns that the design's key feature, its sponge-like copper heat sink, is actually worse than the usual bladed anodized aluminum design. For one, the layer where heat retained by the copper mesh would transfer into the air wouldn't operate effectively; for another, heat sinks are often colored black to help them emit thermal radiation, but copper cannot be anodized to get this benefit.

While Silent Power hasn't made it to the big leagues of crowdfunding (even their PayPal account was recently frozen for possibly unrelated reasons), it's not the first crowdfunded project with a potentially shaky concept and a solid design. The burden of policing these projects shouldn't fall on anyone other than the creators, but when ideas can sound so convincing on so little—like the Kickstarter project that lost $3.5 million while failing to deliver a password management USB key—they bear a second look.